Is it Time to End the War on Drugs?

Why controlling drug use seems impossible

The perennial debate on whether to end the "war on drugs" seems to be heating up again. Prison over-crowding and the unprecedented violence in some parts of Mexico are two of the factors leading some to question whether it is time to try something other than harsh criminal punishments for illegal drug use.

And indeed, it would be difficult to argue that the war on drugs has been a success. I live in Oklahoma, the state with the highest incarceration rates for women. A high proportion of these-over 50% in some areas-are in prison for drug-related offenses. Now, many of these women have children. And those children, separated from their mothers for years at a time, are-guess what?-likely to use drugs. So they too are likely to end up in prison. This does not appear to be a very intelligent social policy.

This, among other examples, makes some level of legalization of drug use sound like the way to go. Perhaps it is. But then we run into the fact that, as David Courtwright has pointed out, throughout history probably the best predictor of addiction rates in any place is simply the availability of drugs. When drugs are more accessible more people use them, and more people begin to exhibit the patterns of use we call addiction.

It's sad, but the process of evolution is oriented more toward survival of the species than providing pleasure for individuals. Strong pleasures do occur but we are built so that they are relatively infrequent; these pleasures tend to be associated with vital processes such as reproduction. If human beings were constructed so that they tingled with maximum pleasure every moment of their existence, they would simply lie around and enjoy themselves, rather than grappling with the rigors of the environment and assuring the continuation of the species.

Clever animals that we are, we have nevertheless figured out a lot of ways to artificially stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain and thereby circumvent the natural stinginess of our pleasure systems. Lots of people find these techniques difficult to resist. Thus I would put my money of the possibility that if we make it less difficult and dangerous to get mind-altering drugs, many more people will use them, and we will have traded a criminal problem for a public health problem.

And in fact, it's worse than this, much worse. Here in the United States, we have created an entire culture based on stimulating ourselves through entertainment. Some cultures throughout history have valued honor, or piety, or moderation. We value enjoyment and personal pleasure. For this reason, neither a war on drugs nor legalization will work to keep drug use under control. We live in a society that, in its attempt to keep a high consumption economy humming, tells its citizens that pleasure and arousal are the most important goals in life. It cannot really come as a surprise, then, when many people are inexorably drawn to drug use.

To learn more about the culture of entertainment, please visit Peter G. Stromberg's website. Photo provided on Flickr by Tomas de Aquino, from Wikipedia.

There have been cultures around the world that have used drugs safely and without having societies that are entirely dependent. Not to mention, smoking rates are on the decline in North American countries. Is that not a sign, that perhaps education is a more powerful deterrent than criminalizing certain substances.
Over and under the counter medicines are also available by drug users, including the ability to use cough syrup for the DXM within. This is an easily available high, so why hasn't everyone jumped on it?

Taking your points one at a time: (1) Many societies have used drugs safely. I agree, so long as we use a broad definition of safety. In fact, it is precisely my point that our society is one in which drug use patterns are likely to be especially problematic. (2) Tobacco use rates actually started to decline before the anti-smoking campaigns that began in the 1960s, but I agree that education can be effective in reducing drug use (3) You seem to be saying that there are factors other than accessibility that influence rates of drug use, and again I agree. I didn’t say that accessibility is the only important factor. Thanks for contributing to this discussion.

1. So does that not then lead back to education? Should we not be educating our society on Harm Reduction instead of teaching them to abstain. People will do what they want, however is knowledge not the best protection against harm. Just look at how innefficient that whole sexual abstinence movement has been. From past experience with our culture in the 1960's and the 1980's it would seem to be true that in some respects just allowing people to make their own decisions without any insight into a drug can lead to very dangerous results.
2. That's a really interesting fact. Would you happen to know why that may have occured?.
3. Accessibility is an important factor. However legalization tends to make it harder for youth to acquire substances. Having the substances regulated makes it harder for people who are under age to acquire them.

1. I too favor education as one means to control drug use. However, as I say in my post, our society also sends powerful messages encouraging people to seek arousal above all else. I want to educate people about that.
2. I discuss the decline in smoking rates briefly in my book Caught in Play. The basic idea is that smoking rates started to drop along with the culture that fostered smoking, what Randall Collins calls the "carousing rituals" of the mid-20th century. His analysis of the situation (which I'm simply repeating) is contained in his book "Interaction Ritual Chains."
3. Interesting.

I can’t speak for everyone, but to me it seems that to the extent that a legalization system restricts accessibility of drugs people want, it will continue to be supplemented by an illegal system of distribution. I am not opposed to some level of legalization, and I am certainly not opposed to changes in drug policy. I am just trying to point out that our society is trapped in a contradiction, in that there are elements of our culture that actually work to encourage drug use.

The point of the war on drugs was to stop drug use in the U.S. It's failed at that, so let's instead use the war money to help people stop using drugs, in both direct treatment and by addressing social issues that impact drug use. Let's see if we can impact the public health aspect of drugs instead trying to solve it militarily.

No, it would eliminate the criminal problem and treat it more as a health problem than is currently. How does jail help a drug user in any way, whether an addict or just someone who chooses an illegal drug over a legal drug like alcohol.

Also anybody who wants drugs can get if they want too, clearly the law is not stopping many people, especially addicts. The only difference if it were legal, drug users would know exactly what they're taking, the purity, and the dosage. Also the drugs would be more restricted unlike the drug dealer who will sell to anybody, whether 12 or 21.

Which begs the next question, has anybody that argues for drugs to remain illegal learned about alcohol prohibition and it's effects both during and after? After it was repealed street violence went down because gangs weren't fighting over it, people were dying less because it was regulated, not made by anybody who wanted to sell it, and otherwise law abiding citizens weren't being treated as criminal.

Also look at Portugal and their decriminalization of all drugs, who have seen addiction rates fall and hiv rates go down. Yet it seems people would rather go with a fear based approach that causes more harm to the user and society as opposed to one based on science and logic.

Also I don't see why the government says illegal drugs aren't allowed to be taken even though it's our own body and were allowed to take other harmful substances such as alcohol, cigarettes, or even fast food.

Thanks for commenting. You make a number of arguments in favor of legalization, all of which seem reasonable and worth discussing. I just want to make sure you (and other readers) understand that my post does not argue that we should continue current drug control policies.